1×12 – BEYOND THE SEA
by foxestacado
Written by Glen Morgan and James Wong
Recap by Adrienne (aka Starbucket)
We fade in on an angel atop a lighted Christmas tree. Oh, good. The Christmas episode. Hey! It’s that guy! From Twin Peaks and that show about that movie with James Spader! IMDB tells me, helpfully, that this follicly challenged gentleman is Don S. Davis. And, before you ask, not the composer. I knew you were thinking that. It’s the actor. He’s examining the tree with military precision as he asks someone in the background if the tree’s planning on sticking around much longer. From the kitchen, Scully retorts, a trace of a smile on her face, “Yup. All year.” Oh, so it’s not so much a Christmas episode as a post-Christmas one. That’s okay, too. Fewer Christmas carols, at least. Anyway, she continues, “Since you always made us take the Christmas tree down the day after Christmas, I’m making up for lost time.” Aw, that’s so sad. So, this must be her dad.
Okay, let’s not kid ourselves. I’ve seen this episode a thousand times. And just to show you how much of a nerd I was back in high school, I actually made an audio recording of this episode and burned it onto a CD so I could listen to it on the bus. Yes. I really did. So, I kinda know it by heart. That’s her dad and that woman who’s about to pop up behind her is her mom. So, now that that’s all taken care of, let’s move on.
Scully’s father, who I’m going to call Ahab because, let’s face it, that’s what we all call him anyway, rolls his eyes in that “my kid’s crazy but I love her” kind of way, saying, “If your idea of fun is picking up dried pine needles, treat yourself.” I’ve found that “treat yourself” is a common phrase on this series, which I find odd because I don’t know a single person in real life who says it. Kind of like, “search me”. Is that like, “I don’t know?” Because, really, who’s actually gonna search you for the answer? Moving on. Scully’s mother, Maggie, pops up behind her, played by the lovely and talented Sheila Larkin, who I’m sure didn’t get this job because she’s married to one of the producers (R.W. Goodwin, to be precise, and I didn’t even have to look that up), and with her big hair and peach sweater verbally smacks her husband upside the head, “As if he’s an authority on having a good time.” The Scully ladies share a moment, smiling to each other. Maggie offers to help Scully clean up what must have been a lovely post-Christmas dinner, when Ahab tells them it’s time to leave. I never really understood why he’s all abrupt about it, but Maggie’s like, “Oh, okay” all surprised. He wants to “shove off”, which indicates (very subtle, 1013) that he’s in the Navy. See? With the ship lingo? Mom and Dad kiss their lovely daughter goodbye and – oh, how sweet, they do the Ahab-Starbuck thing for the first time (on the show, anyway). Oh, you know. He calls her Starbuck, she calls him Ahab. It’s a Moby Dick thing. Read it. Or at least the cliff notes.
Ahab asks her about work and she nods, telling him it’s good. Clearly, she hasn’t told him about her crackpot albeit brilliant partner who’s trying to get to the heart of a global conspiracy and reads way too much porn. It seems like Daddy wouldn’t approve. Anyway, she sees them out the door, which – and I know I’m like the aside queen right now, but the door is in a totally different place than it ends up being. Right now it’s, like, in the kitchen. And appears to lead right out onto the street. Which, as we all know, is in a completely different place from where it ended up, by that big dresser in the living room.
Later that night, Scully’s asleep on the couch while an infomercial about, I kid you not, spray on hair, plays on TV. Maybe her father’s in the market, what with the baldness, and all. She looks so cute and relaxed, curled up into a little ball and snuggled under a blanket. Her father sits in the chair opposite her under some eerie spotlight. His mouth moves, but no sound comes out. Scully opens her eyes and notices her father sitting there, silent. She tells him she thought they left, and what’s he doing there watching her sleep? Cuz, Dad, that’s kinda creepy. Anyway, he continues with the not-talking until the phone rings. Scully turns at the sound, and when she turns back to him, he’s gone. Spooky. She gets up and picks up the phone, which is huge! There’s soft crying on the other end, and after a moment we hear Maggie tell her that her father died of a heart attack an hour ago. Sad. Scully’s like, “Uh-uh. He was just in my living room!” She looks back over at the chair where he was sitting, all freaked out.
Aaaand… credits. Pretty.
We’re now at Jackson University in Raleigh, North Carolina . A hunch tells me we’re really in Canada, but you can never really know about these things. Ah, that joke never gets old. Although, I guess it will when they move to L.A. The camera pans across a dark lot as we hear a young lady seducing her boyfriend with really bad dialogue about wishing he were under the tree on Christmas day. A car comes into frame, its windows all steamed up. Inside, the girl is straddling the boy and they’re makin’ out like a couple of, well, college kids. Go figure. There’s a knock on the window as a flashlight beam invades the darkness of the car. The kids instantly separate, buttoning buttons and zipping zippers as the boy rolls down the foggy window. The flashlight-wielding man tells College Boy to get out of the car. College Boy tells Flashlight Man that they’ll be on their way, but he insists the boy get out of the car. College Boy does, and Flashlight Man shines his trusty beam directly at his face. Flashlight Man asks for ID, but College Boy, who must be learning something because he notices that the man’s wearing jeans and, duh, cops rarely wear jeans while on duty, is all, “No, you ass. Stop bothering me and my girlfriend. I was almost to third base.” He actually asks to see the guy’s own ID, but Flashlight Man decides that this is taking too damn long and Golden Girls is on, so he hits the kid with the Mag Lite and the kid drops like an anvil. The girl, still in the car, freaks out, as we cut to:
FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C. We’re panning up from an empty envelope on a desk to Mulder reading a “federal profile”. He’s concentrating very hard, which gives me the opportunity to stare at him, with his pretty, pretty face and youthful enthusiasm, for a few seconds (okay, I paused the DVD) before he’s interrupted. Scully peers over his shoulder (well, more like around his arm, since she can’t really see over his shoulder at her height) to see what he’s reading. “The last time you were that engrossed, it turned out you were reading the Adult Video News,” she snarks. Seriously? There’s a magazine about porn movies? He couldn’t just be reading Hustler like normal men? Anyway, Mulder’s all concerned for her. He thought she wouldn’t be in due to the, y’know, death, and all. He’s so concerned, he calls her Dana. She fiddles with something on another desk, not looking him in the eye, as she repeats his, “Dana,” and chuffs mirthlessly. She’s probably thinking, “Great. Now he’s trying to relate to me. Ugh. I don’t want him to relate to me. I just want to do my job. This is creeping me out.” Naw, just kidding. She probably wants to jump his bones. She tells him she’s fine and quickly changes the subject to the file in his hand. Sensing that she doesn’t want to talk about it (good call, Mulder), he moves on to the case.
He hands her the file as the exposition fairy swoops in. It/he tells Scully that Elizabeth Hawley and James Summers, the make out twins from the previous scene, were abducted from school two days before. This is the second abduction of its kind. The first, he explains, was a couple of college kids exactly one year prior, from Duke University, and they were found dead a week later. “They were kept alive, tortured during that period,” Scully reads. Lovely. Looks like a serial incident. This means that they have five days to find these kids before they’re killed. Which is, apparently, one of two “grim deadlines” that they are worried about. There’s this guy on death row who’s going to the North Carolina gas chamber in five days, too. He claims to have intimate knowledge of these two kids through psychic ability, which leads me to believe that he probably spies on people in the shower when he’s bored. In which case I’m kinda disgusted. Anyway, this guy, Luthor Lee Boggs (because evil people always have three names. Didn’t you know that?) wants to be downgraded to life without parole, thus opting to die slowly instead of quickly. Mulder, who wrote the profile on Boggs back in the dizzay, thinks he’s in cahoots with the killer, not a psychic. Mulder, skeptic? What are we watching, Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose? I thought not. He believes in psychic ability, he just thinks this guy’s full of shit. Oh, that makes more sense.
According to Boggs, Mulder explains, he received a first stay of execution when he was already strapped in the chair. And at that moment he developed the ability to channel spirits and demons. Oh, yea. That’d make me a believer, too. Isn’t it more likely that, in Boggs’ fear and panic of returning to the electric chair, he came up with a way to get out of it by faking psychic-icity? Psychosis? No, that’s not right. Psychic ability? And that he’s working with the kidnapper to prove that he’s not faking, using a last-ditch, “get out of the electric chair” card? That’s what Mulder thinks, anyway. Mulder sits at his desk as the exposition fairy struggles to keep its wings from crapping out under the weight of this long-ass monologue. Scully follows suit in her chair across from him (wow, this is way before she had a desk. Keep waiting, Scully. It’ll take four years and a badly timed one night stand to get that requisition order in.), and Mulder tells her that Boggs likes killing. A lot. He killed his entire family over Christmas dinner and then sat down to watch the last quarter of the Detroit/Green Bay game. And why did they get this case, you ask? Well, because Boggs asked Mulder to come down and investigate, that’s why. Boggs feels that Mulder is the only one who “truly understands what he is.” Joy. And with that, Mulder grabs his coat and heads toward the door, but not before I notice that there is a picture of an astronaut where the I Want to Believe poster should be! The hell?
Anyway, Mulder leaves for Raleigh this afternoon. Good, because that fairy could sure use a break. Scully wants to tag along but Mulder’s concerned about her emotional state as a result of her father’s death, and thinks she should take some time. This is a far cry from the Mulder of six years from now, who asks Scully to do his mother’s autopsy for him. I think I like this Concerned Mulder Model better. Anyway, she insists she needs to work to keep her mind occupied, and he tells her how sorry he is about her father. He actually cups her cheek in his hand and does this little rub thing, and I remember this moment well because it is the exact point at which I became a shipper for life. What a long, hard road it’s been for me since, let me tell ya. Anyway, she seems to appreciate the sign of affection, but she’s understandably preoccupied. She nods thank you and he walks out the door.
With him gone, she skulks over to a nearby file cabinet and starts flipping through the X files. She pulls out one marked “Visionary Encounters W/ the Dead,” stares at it for a second as though considering it, then quickly puts it back and shuts the drawer. That’s right, Scully. Just rationalize it away. It’s a little hard to do at first, but by the time you get to season 5, you’ll be just missing alien spaceships that fly right over your head like a pro.
The sea. Some guy is pouring what I assume is ash over the side of a crappy fishing boat to the tune of Bobby Darin’s “Beyond the Sea” as the Scully family, umbrella wielding and black-clad, watch on. Ah, Captain Ahab’s funeral. So, sad. This is the only time we see her supposed-brother Charlie, and we’re left guessing which one he is because neither one of them are the guy who ends up playing her brother Bill in season four. Scully tells her mother that, “As a captain, [her father] was entitled to burial in Arlington with full ceremony.” That’s the guns and the flag folded into a triangle, etc., for those not in the know. Her mother looks at her with unshed ears pooling in her eyes and, man, Shiela Larkin is awesome as she says, “This is exactly what he wanted. Just the family.” They watch the guy in the boat a little more when Maggie begins to tell Scully about how “Beyond the Sea” played when Bill (that’s Ahab to me and you) got home from the Cuban Blockade. He marched right up to her and proposed. That is so sweet. That’d totally be my favorite song too, if some adorable guy in a Navy uniform proposed while it was playing. Scully waits a beat, then, figuring it’s a moment of truth kinda day, asks her mother if, even though they didn’t approve of her non-medical career, was her father proud of her? Her voice breaks a little here as we are reminded, yet again, how much raw talent Gillian had, even back then. Maggie, still staring out at the sea, says simply, “He was your father.” Scully’s all, “Thanks Mom. That means jack shit, but I appreciate the vagueness of your answer. That’ll really help me sleep at night.”
We then crossfade onto a pair of handcuffed hands. One set of knuckles reads “kiss”, the other “kill”. I wonder if he’s a big U2 fan (”Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me”). Anyway, this is Boggs. Or, if you watch Deadwood, Doc Cochran. He’s telling Mulder all about how his soul is going to “drown in Hell’s sea of fire”, but he’s speaking in the third person, which I hate because how pretentious can you be? He explains to Mulder and Scully, who are sitting across from him in one of those prison interview rooms, that they can basically travel through time in that room, and he can take them wherever they want to go and tell them whatever they want to hear. But when he tells them this, he calls them “Fox” and “Dana”. I thought he was psychic. Doesn’t he know that you can’t call them by their first names unless they’re emotionally distraught, in jeopardy, or about to be seduced by an evil bitch woman who talks out of the side of her face? Guess he’s not that psychic. Anyway, each time Boggs speaks it’s like a different person is speaking through him. His tone of voice and his vocabulary changes as he seems to be taken over by various personalities. It’s an excellent performance by Brad Dourif, but Mulder isn’t buying it. One of the voices tries to negotiate: “Boggs’ life for da kids, know what I’m sayin’?” He’s, apparently, channeling Tony Soprano for that one. Mulder pulls a swatch of blue cloth from an evidence bag and hand it to Boggs, basically requesting that he try and prove he’s legit by pick up psychic signals from it. Mulder tells him that he wants to believe. Maybe that’s where the poster is: still in the art department. A set designer is pouring over a blurry photo of a UFO wondering, “Hm, what should we write underneath?” After months of hair pulling and trial runs, continually coming up empty, one of the interns hands him a script for this episode. He flips through it dramatically, finds this line, and, voila. A poster is born.
Boggs rubs the blue cloth back and forth in his hands, then starts twitching and screaming, as though someone’s hitting him. He’s channeling the kidnapped boy, telling them that he’s tied with packing twine and being whipped with a wire coat hanger. He then begins to make vague references to landmarks that will, theoretically, help them find the kidnapped students. A condemned warehouse, waterfalls without water, and a stone angel (Which, if real, would freak my ass out. Yours, too, if you’ve ever seen the Doctor Who episode called “Blink”. Shudder.). He swears the kids are there. Breathing heavily, Boggs seems to deflate, losing all his energy. He tells them he’s got to go as his breathing returns to normal. Whether Mulder believes him or not, that was a pretty amazing performance. I’m losing my ability to snark! No! Mulder leans in real close to Boggs, sliding the blue cloth from between his fingers. He holds it up and whispers into his ear: “I tore this off my New York Knicks t-shirt. It has nothing to do with the crime.” Which makes total sense because Mulder’s from Massachusetts and is thus either a)a traitor to the Boston Celtic nation or b) played by a guy from New York who can’t seem to keep himself out of the character. I think the latter. Anyway, Mulder smugly walks out of the room as Scully watches him go, surprised that he tricked Boggs like that. Really? I’d be more surprised that, after that performance, he still doesn’t believe. I think even she’s on the fence. It’s okay, though, because she’s all emotionally traumatized over the death of her father. If it were any other day, she’d be walking right out with him. But, I guess, if it were any other day, Mulder would be the believer. But these two have to play that game: One always believes, the other doesn’t. If they agreed, this would be a pretty boring show. Of course, then they could just have sex for 45 minutes, which would still make lots of people very happy.
Scully stands, putting her pad and pen into a briefcase that looks like it should belong to a tweed-jacket wearing Yale professor in 1964, or Dr. Indiana Jones, and stands to walk out after Mulder. Boggs, still slumped over in the chair, begins to sing quietly, “Somewhere… beyond the sea…” and Scully stops abruptly. What the…? She turns and it’s not Boggs sitting there, but her father, in the orange, prison-issue jumpsuit. She gasps, totally freaked out. As am I. Or, I would be, if I hadn’t already seen this, like thousands of times. She falls back against the glass wall behind her, closing her eyes in hopes that, when she opens them, he’ll be gone. And, wish granted. He’s back to Boggs, but he tells her ominously, “Did you get my message, Starbuck?” Oooh. Flustered, she practically sprints into the hallway to join Mulder, eyebrow cocked. Mulder notices her sudden shakiness and asks her if she’s all right. “Did Boggs say something to you?” he asks, all protecty-boyfriend like, “Because I’d totally beat the crap out of him to defend your honor.” She insists, kind of uninsistant and shakily, that she’s fine, and she’s thinking about her farther. Mulder puts his dick and tape measure away and suggests that she head back to the hotel. Now that Boggs has been “exposed as a fraud” and “may be orchestrating the kidnapping”, Mulder’s going to stay behind for a couple hours and try to beat the location of the kids out of him. Oh Em Gee. Did he not just watch what happened? The guy was spasming in pain! Who cares what he was rubbing? There are psychics who do not get their visions from objects, Mulder. Duh. I thought you read up on this sorta stuff. I guess your judgment is blinding you. God! You’re just like Mr. Darcy! Get off your damn high horse! (Sorry, I watched Bridget Jones last night) Boggs is being led by a guard back to his cell, in handcuffs and leg shackles, still singing that famous Bobby Darin tune. Scully, who looks like she’s about to have a heart attack, takes off so fast you’d swear she left the iron on as Mulder watches this entire interaction, bewildered. As usual, he’s totally oblivious to Scully’s needs. I hope he’s better in the bedroom, for her sake.
Cars. Scully’s driving, presumably back to the hotel, when she sees a sign for Hotel Niagara. The sign is of a big light waterfall. We flashback to Boggs telling her about the waterfall without water. Hm. Wonder if that’s a clue. She looks closer at the hotel sign before flashing back to Boggs’ prediction about the angel of stone, but it’s a totally different take of him saying that! Why in God’s name didn’t they use the same one? His delivery is totally different! Way to keep an eye on continuity there, 1013. Of course, that never was your strong suit. Scully looks to her left to see a stone angel statue lit in blue. Don’t take your eyes off it, Scully! It could transport you back to 1912 and you’d have to live your whole life in the past as one of Edith Wharton’s characters! Oh, wait. You already did that. She makes an abrupt right turn into an alley and notices a condemned warehouse. How do we know it’s a condemned warehouse? Why, because there’s a big red sign on the door that says, “Condemned warehouse.” Hm. Another clue, perhaps? She goes inside, stupidly without backup, and freaks out when some birds flutter off screen. Flashlight in hand (but, you’ll notice, gun not drawn), she finds a bunch of lit candles along side a wire coat hanger, lots of blood, and a charm bracelet. But no bodies or bad guys. Whew.
Back in the hotel, Scully’s sitting in a high-backed chair, hands clasped, staring vacantly at another chair in front of her. It’s actually quite a clever shot, as the camera pans up from behind the chair onto her troubled face. Woah. There was a quick flash of her father sitting in the chair in her apartment. Freaky. Scully’s apparent emotional turmoil is rudely interrupted by a knock at the door. Her head turns toward the door, and this is probably my favorite shot of the series, because it’s a close-up of her profile with the light coming sort of from behind the camera to illuminate her eyes in this really weird and cool way. Mulder announces himself as she rises to answer the door. He explains that the bracelet she found was Liz Hurley’s. I mean, Liz Holley’s, aka College Girl. And, go, Scully, for finding that place. She’s, understandingly, a little freaked out that she was so spot on, and changes the subject to Boggs. “Did Boggs confess?” she asks Mulder, subtly putting the chairs back where they belong. In classic Mulder fashion, he doesn’t have any idea what she’s doing and makes a quippy remark about how Boggs channeled Jimmy Hendrix for three hours. Or something like that. Halfway through his standup routine, Scully blurts out, “I lied to the police about how I found the warehouse,” and she explains to Mulder that she was on her way home, right, and she just sorta saw the landmarks Boggs mentioned and followed them outta, y’know, curiosity. Of course, instead of being all, “Finally, Scully! I’m so glad you believe in something I believe in! We should celebrate this occasion with a little sex!” he’s all, “Bitch! I told you he was faking, how come you didn’t listen to me?” Okay, he didn’t say that, but he’s upset because she could have been walking into a trap, and without backup. Which, in his defense, was kind of a stupid thing for her to do. He posits that she didn’t want to look like an ass in front of the local PD, which is, apparently, his job (and right he is, Scully), and that’s why she lied. And, yeah, she kind of agrees with him. But now it’s her turn to be pissed. Dude, why you pickin’ on our emotionally dragged-through-the-mud-though-albeit-foolish little Scully? She thought you’d “be pleased that [she'd] opened [her]self to extreme possibilities.” Yea, normally that would fly, honey, but Mulder’s kinda determined to see Boggs fry, and you just spoiled all his fun.
Mulder finally realizes that she’s not acting quite like the little ice queen that she normally is this early in the series, and thinks it may have something – not sure what – to do with her father. Hm. “You said he didn’t approve of you becoming an FBI agent,” he says. When she said that, it must have been in one of those scenes that we hear about later because they’d be way too dramatically intriguing for the audience to handle. Either that, or too hard for the writers to write. “If being on the job now makes you feel guilty or uncomfortable or uneasy, I think you should back away. Because if it’s clouding your judgment, you’re putting yourself in danger.” And I get that he’s trying to be all altruistic and understanding here, but he’s kinda coming off like an ass. Why is it that, when she believes in something, her judgment is clouded, but when he does he’s absolutely right and sure? She just can’t win with him. At any rate, Scully isn’t buying, although she’s thinking about it. With her reddened face and reluctant voice she tells him, “I love this job.” He tells her she loves her father. Which is like, duh. But she’s not going to quit her job for him. She didn’t when he was alive, what’s the point now that he’s dead? Then, he pulls out the old “Dana” card again, imploring her to “open [her]self up to extreme possibilities only when they’re the truth.” I so want to punch him in the teeth right now, which is a first for me on this episode. For the 1000th time, why is he right this time, yet still right every other time? I think my keyboard is resenting this line of thinking, because I’m punching the keys a little – okay a lot – too hard. But, Mulder explains, “Luthor Boggs is the greatest of lies,” because Mulder “knows” that Boggs is working with the kidnapper and that they need to catch him communicating with him. I don’t like skeptic Mulder.
We’re back in the prison, and Mulder shoves a newspaper under Scully’s nose while she’s in the middle of reading something else. Is it just me, or is this kinda rude? But that seems to be keeping with tradition in this episode. The article he shows her indicates that the kidnapped teenagers have been found, but Mulder explains that this is a mock-up done by the Carolinian to trick Boggs into trying to call his cohort. Ah. A guard slides the paper through the cell door as Mulder and Scully watches Boggs read it on a monitor. Two hours later, they continue to watch as Boggs is lead into a small room with a phone, so he can make his one phone call. As Scully tells Random Guy to start recording, a shrill ringing fills the air. Mulder snaps, “Turn off that phone” as Boggs stares into the camera. Scully realizes a few rings in that it’s coming from Mulder’s cell phone and he sheepishly picks it up. How embarrassing. Boggs is on the other end. He asks Mulder why he doesn’t believe when Scully does. Mulder’s all, “because she’s always wrong and I’m always right. Haven’t you been watching the show?” Scully tells Mulder that, whether they’re in cahoots or not, they have to follow because the kids are gonna be dead in three days. “And then a day later, our only connection to the case will be pulling up a chair at the gas chamber.” Lovely imagery, Agent Scully. Mulder agrees to go along with Boggs, but still makes it known to everyone – everyone! – that he’s still right.
Boggs, breathing heavy again. Must be channeling. Does this remind anyone else a little too much of Silence of the Lambs? Other than 3rd wheel Mulder, we have a vulnerable young FBI agent, a guy in jail who has a connection to the killer and is himself a monster, and a grim deadline before the victim(s) is/are murdered. I wonder if writers Morgan and Wong were on a Jodie Foster kick when they sat down to write this. Anyway, Boggs. Channeling. Right. He tells them that the killer’s excited to kill, and that he’s got a skull earring and cold eyes. Nice. Let’s run right out and get him. I think I know exactly who it is. But then Boggs tells them that he’s in a small boathouse on Lake Jordan. Now we’re getting somewhere. Mulder and Scully hop up to canvas boathouses around the lake when Boggs shares another little nugget of information: “Mulder, don’t go near the white cross. I see you down, and your blood spills on the white cross.” Mulder’s all, whatever, ass. I’m Jewish. And they walk out.
Now we’re following the killer as he whips his leg with a coat hanger, then holds it against College Girl’s neck all venomously. Before he can, I don’t know, scrape her? He hears a noise as a bunch of not-so-subtle feds in FBI flak jackets storm the area. The killer is gone. Scully goes straight for College Girl, who’s bound and gagged, but alive. Mulder and his FBI posse go sweep the docks, but Mulder gets separated. He sees a tent flapping off to his right and yells, “Federal Agent!” as a shot is fired from the tent. Scully, while still several buildings away, hears the shot and yells Mulder’s name. It’s not a tent, it’s a boat! Anyway, it speeds off as Mulder’s left on the ground. His face has a look of, “Holy fuck, this hurts!” as Scully rushes up to staunch the bleeding. He was shot in the upper leg. And he’s laying, coincidentally enough, right under a cross beam that looks like a white cross. And there’s Mulder’s blood. Wow. Maybe now he’ll believe.
We smash-cut to a hospital emergency room. Mulder is being wheeled in on a gurney while Scully, who’s clearly holding it together by a thread at this point, watches on helplessly. She shuts her eyes and listens to the frenzy of the hospital as the camera zooms in on her face. She looks smudged and tired, but still adorable.
Mugshots of various criminals are passing over the screen. We hear, “no… no… no” and then we see College Girl being shown these photos by Random Federal Agent #1, and when she finally sees him, she simply closes her eyes all dramatically. And since she’s been so poorly lit up until this point, I’ve just noticed how remarkably similar to Rosario Dawson she looks. Cool. Anyway, the RFA#1 hands the photo she identified to Scully, who looks at it. It’s Lucas Jackson Henry, and he’s my age, which is depressing. See? With the three names? All bad guys have ‘em. Anyway, there seems to have been this car crash 7 years ago, RFA#2 explains, at which time his high school sweetheart and mother were both killed. Oh, and he watched it happen. No wonder he’s messed up. He’s reliving this accident. And the anniversary is three days away. What a koink-i-dink! Now, here’s the kicker. Henry and Boggs were in prison together back in the dizzay, and local PD believes that Boggs had a partner before the last time he was arrested, and that partner was Henry. Scully’s all, “Dammit. Mulder’s right. Again. Do I ever get to be right?” The answer is, of course, no. Sorry, hon.
Now she’s pissed. She walks right into Boggs’ jail cell and just kicks his ass. Verbally, anyway. I’m just going to write the whole thing out because she’s awesome, and it’s awesome, and then we’ll discuss: “You set us up. You’re in on this with Lucas Henry. This was a trap for Mulder because he helped put you away. Well, I came here to tell you that if he dies because of what you’ve done, four days from now, nobody will stop me from being the one that’ll throw the switch and gas you out of this life for good, you son of a bitch!” Yea! A million viewers pump their fists, and Chris Carter smiles smugly at the Network Brass who doubted that Gillian could carry this role. Yes. Meanwhile, Boggs just looks at her like, “who’s this crazy lady who just flipped out in my cell?” When she’s done, we hear “Dayna” in Boggs’ southern drawl, but when she turns around, it’s Mulder in that jumpsuit, saying, “You’re the one that believed me,” like he’s mocking her. She covers her ears with her hands (much like I was doing earlier today when I had to listen to her get raped in Straightheads, which was, let me tell you, NOT FUN.) and shouts, “No, I do not believe you!” She pauses a sec, then opens her eyes again. Boggs is back, telling her that maybe she’ll believe herself. Then he launches into this monologue from the point of view of a teenager, presumably Scully herself, and how she stole a cigarette from her mom’s purse and snuck outside to smoke it and how rebellious she felt. Ah, the Rebel!Scully streak rears its head for the first time.
Anyway, she recognizes the story and practically starts crying. Partly because this is, y’know, shaking her belief system down to the core, and partially because it’s creepy watching your memory coming out of a serial killer. She rationalizes, “That could be a moment from any kid’s life.” Not mine. My parents never smoked. But, I get what she’s trying to say. But then she caves. See, she misses her father so much that she’s willing to go through a murderer to get to him. She’ll believe Boggs, she claims, if he lets her talk to her father. And her voice breaks again here and she’s just heartbreakingly good. Go, Gillian. Boggs agrees, closing his eyes and exhaling. He opens them again and says, “Starbuck” and wow, he’s doing this face where he actually kind of looks like the actor who plays her father. That’s mad skillz. But then Boggs fights back. His face gets all red and he’s like, “No! Nobody talks to anybody until I get a deal!” He’s too scared to go back to the electric chair. He won’t say another word until he’s promised that he won’t have to, “I know my hell is going to be to go back to that chair over and over again for all of time, but in this life – my one and only life – I don’t ever want to go back again – ever!” Okay, sheesh. God. You don’t have to yell.
Then, we flashback. He voiceovers to Scully about the last time he was in the chair. After his last meal, he was strapped into the chair and saw all the souls of all the people he’s killed, “and their fear and their horror that I made them feel when I killed them was injected into me, and their collective fear alone was this gnawing taste of hell.” The souls rush at his body and then he got a stay of execution and has been psychic ever since. Basically. Although it’s told more eloquently than that, I’m tired. He’s scared of that “cold, dark place” that is death, and tells her that Mulder’s looking in on it right now. Scully’s all, “Um, no he’s not. He’s not going to die for at least another year. And then not again for two more years. And then he’ll be dead for a while, but he’ll be okay because he’s really only mostly dead.” Oh, and it’s not a cold place for her father, either, cuz he’s in Heaven, ya’ll. Suck it. Either way, Boggs ain’t talkin’ without a deal. So, she can do whatever she needs to do to get him one, because whether he’s in cahoots with Henry or channeling him, “no information’s comin’ ’til I get a deal.” He’s got nothing to lose, after all. Scully, who’s clearly had just about enough of this channel, implores a guard to let her out of the cell. But not before Boggs reminds her that she needs him to save College Boy. Great.
So, Scully heads over to the warden’s office and he tells her, basically, that boy’s screwed because Boggs is going to fry in two days. Then, she goes to the hospital to visit Mulder, who seems to be doing okay, if a little sweaty. He still believes that Boggs is playing her, though, and tells her not to deal with him. She seems to take this into consideration, then promptly ignores his advice. Back at the prison (boy, our Scully’s a busy little bee today), she tells Boggs that he got his deal and he thanks her. Then he channels the boy and after a lot of shaking and sweating, tells her that the boy is being held in a condemned brewery “out by Morrisville.” Oh, that condemned brewery. The Blue Devil Brewery, to be precise. Scully writes down the information, then gets this sour look on her face, “Luther, if you really were psychic…” she starts. “I’d'a known you lied,” he finishes. He knew she didn’t get the deal, but told her because she tried and she believes him and apparently that’s what matters, even though he’s still going to Hell tomorrow. As she walks out, Boggs tells her to avoid the devil, “Don’t follow him into the devil. Leave that to me.”
Lucas Henry’s getting anxious now. Must be all that old condemned beer he’s drinking. College Boy is tied up and scared, and his horrible hair makes him look like Billy from Twin Peaks on a bad day. Henry heads over to College Boy with this teeny tiny little axe and is about to cut off his teeny tiny little head – no, not that head, you pervert – when Scully and the FBI Posse enter the building and tell him to freeze. Scully shoots him in the arm but he runs away. After a little cat and mouse to pass the time, Scully watches him run across this a board over large hole where, I assume, they used to brew the beer, and she sees him fall right through it into the vat. He’s dead. She notices the blue devil right above the vat, and remembers what Boggs told her. So, he was right after all.
The next day, she goes back to tell him that they found College Boy alive and well, and that she believes him. Because if he’d been in on it with Henry, he would have known to expect the FBI, but he totally didn’t. So, Scully was right. Woo hoo! Oh, and he stopped the bad guy and saved the boy’s life. There’s that, too. But the reason she’s really there, Boggs guesses, is not so altruistic. She wants her father’s message, but he won’t give it to her until he’s strapped into the chair. We see Boggs get his final meal as his family watches over, and get lead down the hall with his victims surrounding him, then he’s strapped into the chair and when the shield opens… no Scully. Dude, why isn’t she there? Sorry, Boggs, bt you’re still a killer and she’s still too awesome for you. The gas fills the room and he breathes it in. Gak.
We fade over to Scully in Mulder’s hospital room, trying, as usual, to rationalize it all away. Maybe Boggs did some research and found out her father died and was manipulating her? Mulder’s not buying it. Because now he’s like, “Dude, you believed him this whole episode, and now you don’t? Why can’t you believe?” Which is kinda ironic because he’s basically all, “I told you psychic connections were real. Let’s completely disregard that I thought Boggs was bullshit because I believe in the phenomena and you don’t even do that. Nyah.” But she sits on the edge of his bed delicately, as he gazes at her (even though he wouldn’t admit it) as she tells him that she’s afraid to believe. Why couldn’t she face that fear, even just to get her father’s message, he asks. She tells him, all bittersweet, that she knows what her father’s message was. Mulder asks her how she knows. She says, simply, “He was my father.” Aw. Of course, he was proud of her. And Mulder totally gets it because he caresses her arm as we fade to credits.
Recap by Adrienne (Starbucket)